…of making lists and catching up

or:  …a year of Fridays and Falling in Love,
or:  Not another fucking ‘09 list?

I remember a time where I used to be ahead of the curve. Or at the very least, I felt like I was. It might have only been for a week some time around 1993 or 1994, but I was there. I know I was. I could feel it.

I should clarify at this point, that when I say “ahead of the curve” I’m referring to the knowledge of bands that weren’t quite famous yet. And when I say “curve”, you need to understand that, where I was from the curve wasn’t exactly what you’d call, “pronounced”. Or even a curve really. As discussed previously, living two hours drive south of the most isolated capital city in the world made keeping close to the cutting edge of anything pretty hard [1]. And I should state for the record that this isn’t about trying to stay cool or keep up with the kids. I like the music I like because of how it makes me feel, and I’ve never been one to blindly follow what everyone else is listening to for the sake of fitting in. Nor is it about dropping band names in an effort to make an impression on people. Once upon a time, maybe. In fact this used to sum me up pretty well:

…friday, I’m in love #03 – loud noises

Friday, I’m in Love aims to tell the stories of how I came to find some of my favourite music. Usually – more often than not – they come on a Friday. Some of these bands have been with me forever, others are very, very new to me, my iPod and my world. Whether they’ll stick around, I couldn’t tell you, but for now they seem to make some kind of sense.

While I’ve not being doing this for long enough to have formed any kind of convention, in the interest of actually posting something about something the convention we might’ve been using is going to take a break this week. I’d like to – if I may – take some time to talk about two albums that have found their way into rather heavy rotation on my Apple branded music player over the last couple of weeks or so.

The theme will be loud noises.

…of false starts and frustrations, pt. 2.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve held true on the the false starts. Please believe me when I say that the frustrations are here along for the ride also.

…friday, I’m in love #02 – radiohead

Friday, I’m in Love aims to tell the stories of how I came to find some of my favourite music. Usually – more often than not – they come on a Friday. Some of these bands have been with me forever, others are very, very new to me, my iPod and my world. Whether they’ll stick around, I couldn’t tell you, but for now they seem to make some kind of sense.

For part two, we’re going to jump to somewhere around the middle. Hope you enjoy.

The who: Radiohead
The what: Specifically, The Bends & O.K. Computer
Sounds like: Radiohead. No other words have been invented yet, or if they have, I don’t know them.
The when: First in ‘95, then the follow-up in ‘97, and everything ever since.

…of narcissism and self promotion.

Or: Who reads about who wrote about who Watched the Watchmen?

Self promotion is not a concept I’m entirely comfortable with. Nor is it something I enjoy. While I have never wanted or intended this whole journal thing to propel me to any kind of Internet minor celebrity-dom, I do like the feeling of knowing when something I’ve written is being read, enjoyed, and even better, when it’s making a connection with someone. Trouble is, to stand out amongst a cluttered sea of occasionally high quality writing – and to actually be read – one has to partake in a certain amount of self promotion. Putting the word out on your own behalf to generate interest. To make people click me over someone else, if it’s to be boiled down into it’s crudest explanation.

I guess this goes (somewhat awkwardly) back to my first post. It’s not to say I don’t understand having an online presence, or the idea of social networking, it’s more, I’m just not sure of my place in it. Or more, how I want to fit in it. While window shopping for a new home for my words, I was somewhat attracted to WordPress’ stats feedback. Where I’ve come from, there wasn’t much in the way of viewing statistics (or, anything statistics really), besides whether or not people were actually commenting on your journal. I don’t really consider myself a comment whore [1], and I knew it would take some time before I started generating interest, so I thought it would be nice to get an idea of how many visits I was getting in the meantime.

So, I posted, and I waited – my only real ‘promotion’ being through Twitter, and occasionally Facebook. And it was good, for a while. A new post would generally get me around 5 to 10 views, which, while I realise is but a molecule in a drop in a pretty fucking big ocean, was more than zero, and I was happy. But then, with one word, things changed.

That one word, was Watchmen.

…friday, I’m in love #01 – handsome furs

I thrive on new music. I need it. I crave it. Sometimes I find new bands. Sometimes bands find me. Happy accidents or welcome suggestions from friends. A blog link here. A random video there. Overheard in a CD store, or on the radio. So many paths to follow. Degrees of separation.

So many ways to find new soundtracks to life.

Friday, I’m in Love aims to tell the stories of how I came to find some of my favourite music. Usually – more often than not – they come on a Friday. Some of these bands have been with me forever, others are very, very new to me, my iPod and my world. Whether they’ll stick around, I couldn’t tell you, but for now they seem to make some kind of sense.

And as is my usual method, I’m starting at the end. Hope you enjoy.

The who: Handsome Furs
The what: Face Control
Sounds like: The bastard love children of Bruce Springsteen & New Order.
The when: Friday the 13th of March, 2009

…and who watched the Watchmen? I did.

So after some delay, today I became the last person on the internet to see Watchmen. I guess all the other internet people got in early, cause the session I went to was pretty empty, and there was a lady behind me who kept gasping during the gory bits, which suggested to me she wasn’t from the internet, otherwise she would’ve known that Watchmen was going to be rather, well, graphic.

I don’t usually do the review thing. I’ve talked before how opinions are opinions – you have yours and I have mine, and unless I value yours, it’s really not of much consequence to me. Only, I said it in more words, and perhaps more politely than that. In any case, I’ve decided that, in an effort to say more words on the internet, I’ll write about seeing Watchmen. Since, that’s what most people on the internet are doing. Or at least, they were last week. Now I think they’re writing about how much the Terminator: Salvation trailer kicked ass.

But then, I’ve never pretended to be the cutting edge. ‘Cept for (I say) in high school, but that’s a story for tomorrow. Be warned, depending on your knowledge level and how much you want to be suprised by the film Watchmen, some of the below may be considered spoiler-ific. While I don’t want to talk about plot, I’m going to be discussing the ending. If you don’t want to know anything about anything, stop reading

… now.

…of crossing off lists and moving on.

Yeah, it’s over now,
But I can breathe somehow.

Over Now
Alice In Chains

The list of my favourite bands in High School, that I hoped to see live sometime in my life-time:

• Pearl Jam – March 6th, 1995
• Soundgarden – Febuary 2nd & 3rd, 1997
• Alice in Chains – February 28th, 2009
• Nirvana (or as close as I’m gonna get) – Foo Fighters, February 6th, 2000, February 2nd, 2003
• The Smashing Pumpkins (or as close as I’m gonna get) – Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins Experience – April 6th, 2008
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – May 10th, 1996
• Faith No More – November 1st, 1997
• The Afghan Whigs (or as close as I’m gonna get) – The Twilight Singers – August 7th, 2006, January 12th & 13th, 2007
• Radiohead – February 10th, 1998
• Nine Inch Nails – February 2nd, 2000, August 19 & 20th (thanks to The Unholy Trinity), 2005, February 28th, 2009
• Marilyn Manson – February 7th 1999, October 13th, 2007
• Tool – April 16th, 1997 (curse you over 18s venues!), May 4th, 2002 & February 4th, 2007

The last time I posted this list anywhere, it was when I was on my way to see Billy Corgan’s resurrected Smashing Pumpkins (or as I like to call them, Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins Experience) at the Perth leg of the V Festival. I thought, at the time, that that would be it. That my list was as close to being complete as it would ever be. And while some of the substitute bands I’ve included are a stretch – for instance, it’s highly unlikely Dave Grohl would ever bust out Drain You at a Foo Fighters gig – I’d done pretty well with what I had to work with.

Turns out, I was wrong. But before I tell that story, some catching up is in order.

…of fear and (self) loathing (in Perth)

This is beginning to feel like the long
winded blues of the never,
Static explosion devoted to crushing the broken
and shoving their souls to ghost.

DLZ
TV on the Radio

By now, I’m sure you’ve started to notice I’m not very good at this ‘regular updating’ thing. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, per se, it’s just that, I doubt that what I do have to say is all that interesting to anyone but myself. That, and most of it seems to come across as self indulgent whining.

I’ve never been of the opinion that my opinions are all that important. That’s not to say I don’t have opinions. I do, and when I do, I speak them and they usually come out the same way that anyone else’s strong opinions do. Would I consider myself opinionated? When it comes to certain topics, yes I very much am. I am a self-labelled film, TV and music snob. The success of a lowest-common-denominator film such as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo or more recently, Paul Blart: Mall Cop fills me with an unfathonable combination of hatred and dread. Having said that, I try – where I can – to be mindful of stepping on other people’s tastes. Because just as I can’t stand Rob Scheider, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve laughed my arse off to Anchorman or Step Brothers – two films some may consider as equally purile.

So, in that way things tend to, things in the world work themselves out. I like my stupid shit, you like yours, and lets leave it at that, ok?

…of false starts and frustrations, pt. 1.

Two posts. That’s all it took. Two posts – one of them only really there for the purpose of testing linking images from flickr – before I felt the need to rip it all down and start again. To tear the pages out and save the notebook for another day.

By now, I’m think you’re probably starting to understanding why I chose the title I did.

Today was not a good day. In fact, you could probably stretch that out to the week. For reasons I won’t go into here, what started with good intentions ended with a good kilometre stretch of nicely paved road to you-know-where.

Plans of daily Wii-fitting and nightly salads have quickly turned to a desperate need to be as horizontal on my couch as possible, for as long as possible. While at work, at around eleven a.m. today, the thought of curling up in front of the T.V. entered my head, and then, would not leave. Needless to say, the rest of the day was less than productive.

As a kid – and until rather embarrassingly late in life – I was under the impression that cancer made your hair fall out. I consider myself very fortunate when I say I’d not ever had any friends or family members who ever had cancer, so my only exposure to the disease was when I saw it on television. And since the television I watched was never all that high-brow or true-to-life, stories that revolved around a character being diagnosed usually went something like:

Doctor: “You have cancer.”

Cut to: Character in hospital wearing a scarf or hat, signifying their hair had fallen out.

So, in my brain (and I was going to say ‘child like’ brain, but that would suggest it’s somehow different to how it is now), I put one and one together and got “cancer makes your hair fall out”. I don’t really know where I was going with that. To be honest, it’s a far less embarrassing than admitting I thought Barkley for Sesame Street was a real dog till I was around ten.

…of false starts: these things we start – or that perhaps start us – that refuse to be finished. The unexpected end to best laid plans. The result of good intentions.

… and frustrations: the feelings we find on the unfinished road, when all we can see is all that could’ve been. The disappointment. The anger.

And where to from here? I do not know. Perseverence, I guess. Perhaps more road anaolgies?